Chapter 1: Who is the chilling suspect in Bryan's murder?
This is Debra Roberts here with another episode of Murder at the U from our friends at ESPN and 30 for 30 podcasts. This is the last episode of Murder at the U we'll be sharing for now, so if you want to listen to the rest of the series and learn what happens to Rashawn Jones, follow 30 for 30 podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.
Now, here's the fourth episode of Murder at the U. previously on Murder at the U. Everybody's a suspect when somebody dies.
It was Brian and the girl, man. I used to ask him, where are you getting all this fucking money from? Then he'd be like, oh, I got to call my guy. He never said the name. But I just remember him, like, if you want it, man, come see me then.
From the very beginning of our reporting, we knew the Pata family had a particular suspect in mind for who killed Brian.
Yeah, we know who did it. We know who's responsible for it.
This came in our first conversation with Edric Pata in 2017.
Brian, our brother, was not killed from somebody from outside. He was killed from University of Miami. Miami-Dade doesn't want to put it out there, but...
In our investigation, multiple suspects emerged from different scenarios. There was a nightclub fight with suspected gang members, Brian's alleged connection to the Zopan leader, Ali Adam, and potentially his girlfriend's twin brother. But this theory, that a teammate killed Brian, it had our attention from the beginning.
At first, Brian's brothers, Edrick and Edwin, didn't want to implicate this teammate by name. But over time, they eventually did share a name with producer Dan Arruda. Did he mention having problems with anybody on the team? Yeah.
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Chapter 2: What led to the Pata family's suspicion of Rashawn Jones?
From 30 for 30 Podcasts, this is Murder at the U. Episode 4, The Teammate. After the Padas identified Rashawn Jones by name in 2018, our reporting team tried to learn everything we could about him. Rashawn was in his junior year when Brian Patta was murdered. The police questioned him, but he didn't hear from them after 2007.
Rashawn was still on the team in the spring, but then, after failing another drug test, he left. He transferred to a college in North Carolina, and he ended up playing arena football in Texas. But after Texas, Rashawn moved back home to Florida. In 2018, he married his high school girlfriend, Ashenda. By that time, he had five children. And this is where our timelines converge.
It had been nearly 12 years since Brian's murder. Rashawn and the people in his orbit were going about their lives, most likely not thinking about Brian Pata, until we began calling them up and asking questions. Rashawn grew up in a small town in northern Florida called Lake City. Rashawn's friend, George Timmons, describes the town this way.
It's just a little small country town. There's really not much of anything there. But, you know, everybody comes together for their sports.
George grew up playing football with Rashawn from the age of eight or nine.
We played for the Jaguars, the Pop Warner team. We was on teams together since we was little boys. We've been friends forever, it seemed like.
Rashawn was raised by his mother and grandmother. George said he and Rashawn would hang out at his grandmother's house.
We all used to go there, sit with her, talk to her. His grandmother was really, she was like Rashawn's world.
In high school, Rashawn became a nationally ranked cornerback. As he went into his senior year in Lake City, universities such as Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida recruited him. But, like Brian, Rashawn chose the U. George also decided to play football at Miami.
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Chapter 3: How did Rashawn's teammates perceive his relationship with Bryan?
These hookups were a point of friction with more than one of Rashawn's teammates. According to the police report and our interviews, Rashawn would go behind players' backs and hit on their girlfriends. Willie Williams and Dave Howell both told police that Rashawn did this with the women they were dating at the time.
Rashawn also allegedly went behind Brian's back to talk with his girlfriend, Jada Brody.
He tried to mess with Jada while they were together. That's why they didn't like each other.
Dan, you spoke to many of Brian's teammates. What did they tell you about his run-ins with Rashawn? So a lot of time has passed since they were all teammates. Details are kind of hard to confirm, but it was clear that Brian and Rashawn had several run-ins. One reason could have been because Brian's girlfriend Jada had at one point before dating Brian been involved with Rashawn.
And when you say run-ins, like, did they just shout at each other? Were there fights? Like, what actually happened? Again, these are hard to be exact about. The dates aren't always consistent. One was a locker room scuffle after Rashawn said something about Jada to Brian. We also heard about an argument they had in the cafeteria, also possibly about Jada, but that one wasn't physical.
And then there's one significant fight which several people have told us about, including one of Brian's best friends, Eric Moncourt. What did Eric tell you about that fight? So according to Eric, he and Brian were returning to Eric's dorm room after an off-season summer workout. They get to the dorm room and the door is locked.
But I see like, you know, how the TV's on.
You can see like on the ground.
What the hell's going on?
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Chapter 4: What were the conflicts between Rashawn and Bryan?
I dove in there, grabbed Brian, threw Brian out, threw Rashawn out the room. And then Rashawn was like, well, you might as well go ahead and clip up. I was like, are y'all really going to, like, shoot each other right now over some stupid stuff?
To Eric, Rashawn saying clip up meant bring a gun next time. It was a threat. According to their teammate Chris Zellner, Brian and Rashawn didn't get along afterwards.
They were kind of hanging out before that. You know what I'm saying?
Like, he would come over there, talk, like, because Pat was friends with everybody. But I do remember after hearing that fight, they never, they weren't, like, fucking cool after that. They fucking did not speak anymore.
Prosecutors talk about whether a suspect has motive, means, and opportunity for committing a crime. From all the stories we'd heard, we knew that Brian and Rashawn were at odds and that it likely had something to do with Jada. That could have been a motive. What about the means? Brian was killed at close range with a handgun.
Remember, before the 2006 season started, a shooting that involved two Hurricanes players led head coach Larry Coker to institute a no-guns rule, a rule the players routinely broke. At least two of Rashawn's teammates say they saw him with a gun. Dave Howell told police that Rashawn threatened him with a gun, and his description of that gun could match the one used to kill Brian.
Remember how police couldn't find a spent bullet casing at the crime scene? The gun Dave said Rashawn pointed at him was a revolver, meaning it wouldn't have left casings behind. And teammate Kareem Brown told police that Rashawn said he always carried a revolver, a .38 caliber handgun.
According to a detective's report, the medical examiner said a .38 was possibly the caliber of the bullet that killed Brian. So that could have been the means. And what about opportunity? To establish that, we'd have to track Rashawn's movements as closely as possible on the day of the murder.
On the morning of November 7, 2006, Rashawn found out that he was suspended from the team for failing a drug test. He had marijuana in his system. And so Rashawn wasn't at practice that day, which wouldn't have been unusual for a player who'd been suspended. None of the Miami players we spoke to knew where Rashawn was during that whole day and afternoon.
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